Day 10 - Portugal bus tour

Eventually our train journey came to an end after a fairly disruptive few hours of attempting to sleep. At one point we had our door thrown open and two very stern policemen demanded to see all of our passports (well we guessed that is what they wanted since we don´t know any Portuguese). They were so serious and official looking I imagined they were ready to haul us out of our compartment and throw us onto the tracks, especially me as they had more than a few looks between me and my photo - whose silly idea was it to change my hair cut and colour before travelling?! I get second and third looks when I hand over my passport every time which is always a bit nervewracking, but completely understandable on their part as I look like a completely different person to my photo. Anyway, thankfully the police eventually handed us back our passports and carried on their way storming through the rest of the train, leaving us to continue with our failing attempts at sleep.

After disembarking the train we hiked our way up and down the hilly streets of Lisbon to ourh ostel, which we found to be the best yet with immaculate kitchins, bathrooms, dorms and super friendly staff to top it off.

We decided the best way to see the city with our limited time there was to take the cheesy open deck bus tour. After my initial reservations I can definitely say we were all pleased we opted for this as it was absolutely sweltering and the amount of sights we got to see there was no way we could have covered the same ground on foot. The only downside was they didn´t really slow down for any of the sights so we had to frantically snap our cameras and hope for a decent clear shot without too many tram wires or trees in the way. The city was certianly impressive with numerous monuments, old buildings and gardens to see, much like most Spanish cities really!!

None of us were exactly a box of birds after our rough nights sleep (or lack of) so we opted for a home cooked dinner and cards at the hostel. Nico managed to clean me and Kelly out in blackjack but I then made a comeback by winning euchre. Nothing like a good game of cards to wind down after a long day!